The objects collected and displayed by museums may be connected with famous people, made by exceptional artists, natural specimens, or simple ordinary things that show what everyday life was like for most people. All these objects offer unique ways to learn about life in the United States and the world. In 1996 the Smithsonian Institution…

Debates about how moral education ought to be provided have engaged many of the best minds in education and stirred public controversies throughout U.S. history. The vast array of European peoples who settled the American colonies brought a commitment to moral education and a variety of approaches to the task. While French and Spanish settlers…

The paper suggests informal and formal procedures for evaluating students whose primary language is not English. The importance of detailing the student's educational history and of understanding the community setting is noted. The native language should be used to gather this and other informal data, and translators should be trained in cultural…

The result of a conference bringing historians and educators together with government officials to learn about current literacy research and to discuss research needs, this book presents eight conference papers. Topics covered include (1) the spread of literacy, (2) the impact of the printing press on current attitudes toward literacy, (3) the…

A number of issues must be considered if those in the profession are to construct a theoretically and pedagogically sound definition of literacy as a word and a concept. The profession agrees that literacy is the encoding and decoding of meaning, but there is little agreement on the term "meaning." Sociolinguists define literacy as a cluster of…

There are two perspectives from which the academic performance of children from high or low socioeconomic backgrounds can be viewed. The non-environmental perspective specifies a direct relationship between performance and innate ability; environmental deficits may be correlated with poor performances but perhaps are not causally related. The…

Discusses survey results polling American, Australian, and Japanese teachers' views about educational concepts. Differing cultural backgrounds probably account for varied responses concerning teacher roles, competition, teaching of moral principles, and administrator leadership roles. Effective school management requires knowledge of various…

Describes the techniques used by an American literature teacher to expose students to the influences that shaped American literature.(EL)

This book focuses on the need to equip practitioners to meet the play needs of children in today's early years settings. With babies and very young children increasingly being cared for in out-of-home care settings, it is essential for early years practitioners to be responsive and reflective to ensure that these young children's needs are met in…

Discusses a classroom exercise designed to introduce the themes prevalent in a survey of American literature. The exercise explores issues familiar and applicable to the students' lives, such as cultural attitudes toward masculinity, femininity, community, and heroes, thus making the literature more relevant to student interests. (HTH)

The multicultural approach to teaching students about diversity is out of touch because it fails to represent American life adequately or teach techniques for dealing with bias. Instead of turning children into uncomprehending "tourist," the antibias approach spans the curriculum and emphasizes developmental appropriateness and…

Described is the need for the development of innovative continuous programs that reach minority students at an early age. The importance of mentors for minority students is stressed at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Reasons for the underrepresentation of minorities in the sciences and engineering are discussed. (KR)

Describes the understanding, nature, and meaning of mathematical culture and the implications of mathematical culture for mathematics education. (YP)

This paper describes the cultural influences on the process of interviewing families to develop intervention goals for young children with disabilities. It describes an approach to ethnographic interviewing that involves developing rapport, using descriptive questions, and carefully wording questions, to assist families in discovering answers to…

Video games are neither neutral nor harmless but represent very specific social and symbolic constructs. Research on the social content of today's video games reveals that sex bias and gender stereotyping are widely evident throughout the Nintendo games. Violence and aggression also pervade the great majority of the games. (MLF)